Benghazi Hearings Reveal GOP Ignorance

Capitol Hill's angry little men keep making Hillary bigger

Anyone truly concerned about the safety of
U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad—and that should include every American—has
fresh reason for fury over last September's disaster in Benghazi and its
aftermath. But the target of public anger should not be then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, whose conduct has been exemplary ever since the U.S.
ambassador to Libya and three of his brave colleagues lost their lives last
September. Far more deserving of scorn are the likes of Republican Senators
Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and all the other
grandstanding, conspiracy-mongering, ill-informed politicians who questioned
her on Capitol Hill.

Four months after the tragedy occurred,
Republicans on both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House
Foreign Affairs Committee still seem to be obsessed with the talking points
provided to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before she appeared on television to
discuss the incident.

According to Republican folklore, unsupported
by facts, the Obama White House engaged in a conspiracy to conceal the true
nature of the terrorist attack by mischaracterizing it as a
"demonstration."

The continuing focus on that trivial
issue—long since explained by Rice herself, as well as retired Gen. David
Petraeus and others, under oath—understandably provoked an exasperated Clinton
to scold Johnson, one of the dimmer idols of the tea party.

When the Wisconsin Republican began to harp on
this topic yet again—interrupting her answer, after stupidly asserting that
Clinton could have resolved any questions about the attack with "a very
simple phone call" to the burned-out Benghazi compound—she responded sharply:
“With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because
there was a protest or was it because there were guys who went out for a walk
one night who decided they would kill some Americans? What difference at this
point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and to do
everything we can to make sure it never happens again.”

Questioners Didn’t Grasp
Basic Facts

No doubt Clinton's utterly sane retort will
undergo dishonest editing, in the style of James O'Keefe, to make her sound cavalier
or arrogant. But it is the Republicans in Congress whose attitude toward the
deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his fallen comrades that seems cynical
and false, ever since they first sought to exploit the incident politically
during the presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, having historically supported
reductions in federal spending on diplomatic security, they have done nothing
useful so far to enhance the safety of Americans serving abroad. Worse still,
their questions to Clinton indicate that very few of them, even at this late
date, have bothered to learn the basic facts surrounding the Benghazi incident.

By contrast, Clinton has assumed
responsibility in a meaningful way ever since Sept. 11—which is to say that she
has taken action to ensure a serious response. As required by law, she
empowered an independent investigation, which resulted in dozens of
recommendations for improved security and held several high-ranking State
Department officials to account for the lapses in Libya. It is worth noting
that Thomas Pickering, the distinguished former diplomat who led the probe,
fixed culpability for the security flaws at Benghazi at "the assistant
secretary level," rather than with Clinton herself. Nobody in Washington
understands the workings of the U.S. Foreign Service better than Pickering, who
served in top positions under both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W.
Bush. Certainly not Johnson or Paul, who rather comically asserted that
"if (he) were president," he would have fired Clinton. Always hard to
imagine, a Paul presidency seemed even more remote when he quizzed her about
obscure right-wing conspiracy theories involving Syria, Turkey and Libya.

As Joan Walsh observed on Salon.com, those
irate and ignorant inquisitors on Capitol Hill appeared small and peevish in
their confrontation with Clinton, a woman whose serious, diligent, tireless
approach to public service has armed her with an enduring popularity at least
three times greater than her Republican adversaries in Congress. Their feeble
attempts to cut her down, echoed by the usual loudmouths on radio and cable
television, only make her bigger.

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